This is easy. It’s called Mother Dirt. It clears your skin, and it cost $49.00. My skin was a hot mess for most of my adolescence and into my 20’s.
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck?
Craft & work
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What do you value most in your friends?
Relationships
Question
How much rewriting or revision do you do?
Craft & work
Question
Has knowing that you will die changed how you live?
Death & what remains
I disagree with the question.…I think too many people think that way. They think that getting something is going to improve their life. I challenge anybody who thinks that way, which almost everybody does, to try to flip it on yourself and look around you and think, “What things could I get rid of around me here that would positively influence my life?”
Joe Ciccarone, podcast transcript, Built Not Born, 21 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
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Soman Chainani
Novelist and screenwriter; author of The School for Good and Evil
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder and chief executive of Bumble
That’s a great question. Coconut oil. ... Everything. You can take a bath with it. You can put it in a smoothie. You can cook vegetables with it. You can actually put it on your skin. I think coconut oil is a cheap miracle buy.
Bill Gurley
General partner at Benchmark Capital
I have a very peculiar answer. Really, really amazing nail clippers. Pay 50 bucks for them, or something. It could change your life, I promise.
Debbie Millman
Designer; host of Design Matters; founder of the SVA branding programme
Well, the purchase that has influenced me over the last six months is the Apple pencil. I do so much of my artwork by hand and now there is a device that draws and feels like a real pencil that I can use electronically. It’s changed the way I work.
More from Derek Sivers
View profile →So for years I kept calling myself an entrepreneur until one day I realized like, wait a second, this is expired! Like somebody who is an athlete in high school can’t keep calling himself an athlete forever.
Keep you uncorked, keep you unstuck, keep it flowing, keep the ideas going, keep the feedback, keep you in communication with your potential future customers for the book. I think it's a great idea.
Recorded
Kelly Irving, community interview transcript, Expert Author Community, 29 August 2025
source ↗
I don’t have any fears.
Vulnerability. Mutual admiration. Wide open communication. Yeah. Those are my big three.
The first version of my How to Live book was 1300 pages. It took a couple of years to write and it was 1300 pages, and then it took a couple of years to edit it down to 115 pages. Most of my writing process is editing.
Like at the end of my life, when I can tell that I don’t have long to live, I want to be able to look back and go like, “Wow, I saw the world from many points of view. I did many different things.” That is such a top value for me.
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